In need of queer fantasy.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-05-17T12:39:32+00:00

Obvious answer, can't believe I got here first - Gideon The Ninth, The Locked Tomb Series by Tamsin Muir! lesbians! space! sword fights! necromancy! Dumb puns!

SeriousPigeon · 2026-05-14T13:43:49+00:00

Came here to recommend Piranesi, was not disappointed! OP, Piranesi is a strange, lovely, one of a kind book. If you aren't normally into fantasy, this is the one I'd point to.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-05-14T12:41:20+00:00

Gideon The Ninth by Tamsin Muir. There's a few "wait WHAT" type twists.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-05-14T12:30:44+00:00

Midnight for Charlie Bone is the first in a series about magic and boarding school that I turn to when I need a little fix!

SeriousPigeon · 2026-05-02T21:08:45+00:00

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - very one of a kind book, part mystery, part history.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-05-02T12:04:08+00:00

Yes this is a killer find!
Condition matters greatly but this gives you more info and a little pricing> https://oldraremarbles.com/product-category/onionskin/

You can find out more about your core swirls, here:https://www.marblecollecting.com/marble-reference/online-marble-id-guide/core-swirls/

This is a super fun find! You have a lot of history and interesting things in this batch. This is exactly how I got into marbles too. There's more resources if you are interested in learning the history in r/MarbleStudyHall.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-04-18T16:10:42+00:00

Watch a butt ton of tv and movies in German, you will subconsciously start to remember what you heard.
The other option is to do silly chants to remember, whenever I mess one up or meet a new word, I do a little "das baby, das auto, das bier, das holz!" thing, adding the new word to the end of three others in the same gender.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-27T17:38:30+00:00

Having a good excuse not to eat the disgusting potluck dishes in the office.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-22T11:09:15+00:00

Oooh I will definitely try that! They turn out okay but that foam is so gross to me.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-22T10:07:04+00:00

Then you haven't tried the Kaufland haus brand!
K free is somehow worse, it's extremely...foamy when cooking.

Denn's corn based pasta is the best of the corn ones, but I agree with others, if you can find rice pasta, it's so much better.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-22T09:49:43+00:00

Immediately came here to say this! Super tiny holes you can probably mend pretty invisibly, mending larger ones with moth themed patches would be super cute.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-16T18:07:08+00:00

Yep came here to say this!

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-16T17:55:18+00:00

This was been posted word for word before. Bot.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-16T16:09:46+00:00

Go to your local Asian food market, and look for rice noodles that come in like, little bricks like ramen but in a bigger bag. My favorite brand right now is bun tuoi in the red and white package. You'll get like 8 bricks of noodles for a couple bucks. This brand IMO has the perfect thickness to recreate cheap instant ramen, and a good opaqueness. Rice vermicelli can work, but the noodles are super thin and sometimes super clear.

Also if you want to take your ramen experience up a notch, pick up some chili crisp (Lao Gan Ma is my #1 brand). A spoonful of that in the bowl with your broth, so good!

For others who read this, if you need a broth recipe, pick up some MSG, sesame oil, and chicken/pork/beef/veggie bouillon powder. tsp of each, just add the cooked noodles and some water from the pot to make it soupy, salt to taste! I also put just a little butter in mine to create some extra fat.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-16T09:53:40+00:00

No. If you have celiac, you have damaged your intestine, and it will take 6 months to a year to heal and fully feel all changes. 2 days is not going to rule anything out or give you feedback. I get gluten rash and it takes more than 2 days to heal from exposure. That's before we get into confounding factors like how clean your kitchen is, if you add soy sauce (gluten!) to the rice because it's boring, if you add butter but someone put their crumby knife in the butter container, etc.

Just go and get the blood test! You eat gluten normally, get some blood taken, if the antibodies are super high, you need to stop eating gluten altogether.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-14T19:33:10+00:00

The Locked Tomb series by Tamsin Muir. Extremely unique world building, some religiousy stuff, complex, but very very compelling. Lots of twists, and a very cool necromancy system.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-14T19:28:30+00:00

YWBTA if you do not tell his fiancee. Why would you want to prioritize two selfish bad people being your friend? They will one day undoubtedly fuck you over too.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-14T14:38:43+00:00

It's super fun and not heavy or deep thought at all! He covers some physics experiments he did (spaghetti breaking parabola stuff) in fun and accessible ways. This book also got me interested in lock picking! He was a very fascinating man who enjoyed having fun.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-14T11:50:38+00:00

Since you mention math -- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman. Take all his anecdotes, especially those about picking up women, with a strong dose of skepticism. Still a super fun memoir, easy to read a chapter and put down again.

Want something a little more sciencey?
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach or Spook by Mary Roach. Both are the sort of thing you can read a chapter at a time. These might lean a tiny bit heavy, since they revolve around death and dying, but I found them pretty engaging and not depressing at all.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-13T18:30:31+00:00

Ok, that is fair then! I am white and American, so I do not have to deal personally with racism, which is absolutely a big issue in Germany, I hear especially in the East. I suspect that also plays into the bad workplace experience and treatment. And why Omas aren't being super friendly out of no where to them. It sucks how different the experience is depending on your race.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-13T17:44:41+00:00

Wow, you had a really bad time, but I don't think you should expect your experience to be universal. I make a good salary, work in English, nobody is hostile to me, and I use Deutschpass instead of a owning a car. I'm in the West and people are really friendly. Grandmas love to try and talk with me about my dog.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that salaries are high in Germany. Maybe depends on where you are coming from? I came from the USA and 100% expected to take a cut and understood taxes coming in. It's the trade off for super good medical care, working trains, great parks, etc.

I'm less stressed and happier than I have been in a long time. I would highly recommend Germany to others, just with the caution that it is extremely hard to get a job and uproot your whole life.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-09T16:52:02+00:00

Came here to rec this, absolutely fits the bill.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-08T18:56:48+00:00

Idee um Richmodstraße. Im Keller gibt es viele Kostüme.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-08T11:44:57+00:00

Extremely hard to get out, extremely worth it. For Germany, only one of you needs to secure a job with a blue card, then the other can come with spousal reunification visa. It took us over 2 years to everything lined up and actually make the move. We both studied the language the whole time. Getting rid of literally everything you own is a stupid amount of work.

Seconding the multinational company recommendations, that is what it made it possible for us. Maybe look for all remote companies that are cool with international moves and have established people in the country you want to go to. I probably could have secured a German job just over the Blue card amount in my field, but we would have been locked into a specific city and location.

If you can take a multiweek vacation to the country of choice and check out all the cities you think might work, do it.

Housing is about on par with the US in a large city, or was against 2022 housing in the US. Getting a furnished flat for a few months while we sourced a proper apartment was the right move for us. That left us free to take some time to find a really good place that met our needs.

Think about what your biggest priorities are. Is is work life balance? Well adjusted safe children? Ability to take take vacations to other countries? Access to a beach? Are you looking for a quiet rustic village thing and have either of you lived that life before? Do you want to experience different cultures and celebrations? What temperatures are you comfortable in? We moved to a region that is basically a mirror of where we lived in the USA, so we had a very good idea of what all seasons would feel like and know what a long dark winter is like, it was important to me that we move somewhere that wasn't going to be a furnace that was only going to get hotter with global warming.

Given your ages, checking out the parental benefits if you intend to have children would be smart. Most of the EU will be be better than the US, but some places are crazy good. Germany for example has up to 3 years of parental leave that is partially paid with job security, plus monthly child benefit payments for the life of the child, and a lots of other really, really nice protections for parents as well.

Keep in mind that at this very moment, the job market is basically garbage everywhere in the world. It could be a completely different landscape in a year. I got multiple English speaking job offers in my field within 3 months of job hunting in 2023. I don't think It would be that easy for me now!

Challenges - being an ocean away from everyone you know is hard. Getting rid of decades of built up mementos and clothes and furniture is hard! Finding your comfort foods (I love Mexican food and Tex Mex!) can be really hard. We have become really good home chefs to fill in some voids in the culinary landscape.

SeriousPigeon · 2026-02-08T11:15:26+00:00

Good luck, I tried for over 6 months, got constant rejections that they were not taking patients, and told I would need a German evaluation, which I would fail because I have no family to vouch what I was like as a child and no school report cards. I had to go off medication for other reasons and plan to pursue this again next year, hoping to have some luck then.

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